Monsters Die When Killed

The Daoist Saint had come to inform Su Zhou about a meeting.

If Su Zhou at the Extraordinary Tier was still just a talented junior in the eyes of the Saints, a promising young man, then the Commander Tier Su Zhou of today was different. The gap in status between him and the Saints was likely only a matter of title and prestige.

As long as Su Zhou showed no anti-human or anti-social tendencies, then even if he decided to return to Hongcheng to be a local tyrant who answered calls but ignored orders, the Zhengguo government wouldn’t make things difficult for him. As long as they could coexist peacefully and he was willing to help the country in times of crisis, there would be no problem.

Fortunately, Su Zhou wasn’t that kind of person. While the personality he displayed was far from perfect, it was enough for the Zhengguo government to consider him one of their own—one of their aces.

And an ace, naturally, received an ace’s treatment.

"Most of the Saints have their own duties, working in different regions and positions. Aside from the year-end summary, the Central Committee meetings are generally held within the core Spiritual Net."

Opening the door to the meeting room, the Daoist Saint handed Su Zhou a metal shell. It was very simple in design and looked a lot like a welder’s mask.

The Daoist Saint was, in effect, Su Zhou’s guide into the upper echelons of the Zhengguo government. The old man had been observing Su Zhou all along, and during the three months Su Zhou was missing, he had been the one most frantically searching for any trace of him.

Taking it from the Daoist Saint, Su Zhou could sense that the seemingly simple metal shell was covered in an extremely dense array of branded Runes.

Just from what he could discern, it had functions for creating illusions, stimulating the soul, communicating information, and blocking detection, among others. It was undoubtedly a High-Level Magical Artifact.

Like the military’s Exoskeleton Armor and Spiritual Energy Aggregation Towers, the Runes on these modern Magical Artifacts were inscribed at the nanometer scale. This was how humanity, through modern ingenuity, had found a new path to catch up to the manufacturing capabilities of the Immortal God Level.

But that didn’t change the fact that Su Zhou thought it really looked like a welder’s mask.

’When will the Zhengguo government’s aesthetic sense get a little more normal...’ With that thought, Su Zhou put it on without hesitation.

He had to admit, the mask was quite comfortable. After putting it on, he felt a cool Divine Thought guiding him into a harmless Illusion Realm.

It felt like he just blinked, and Su Zhou found himself inside a massive virtual conference hall.

It was an octagonal hall, shaped like an Eight Trigrams Disc. There were four seats in the innermost circle, with successive outer layers holding eight seats each, for a total of thirty-six. Su Zhou was in the outermost layer, where a chair had just naturally materialized for him.

Some people had already arrived in the conference room, including the familiar Math Saint and Military Saint. There was also a middle-aged man with a full head of white hair whom Su Zhou had never seen before. The Daoist Saint had appeared in one of the four innermost seats; he turned his head and smiled at Su Zhou.

[The 337th Mid-Year Committee Conference]

Su Zhou and the Daoist Saint had arrived relatively early. After them, people trickled in one after another until everyone was present. The meeting then began naturally, without any pleasantries or preamble.

"In the first half of the year, our country’s military achievements along the Southern Border Line and in the South Sea have been plain for all to see. This is all thanks to the efforts of our soldiers and officers."

The first to speak was the Military Saint. The one-eyed old man stood up first, taking a moment to praise the soldiers and claim credit on their behalf.

Then, his expression turned serious as he said, "However, the Spiritual Energy Revival is now intensifying, and the renewal of our military’s weapons and equipment has not kept pace. This has led to outdated armaments in major military regions, a lack of military strength, insufficient training for our troops, and no new blood coming in."

"Not only that, but we also lack high-quality Spiritual Qi Cultivator talent and investment in scientific research. In this area, we have no leading advantage. Even neighboring East Japan is ahead of us in Exoskeleton Armor design."

A giant screen materialized behind the Military Saint, displaying the words ’Comprehensive Spiritualization Reform of the Military’. His proposal could be summarized in three points: he needed money, manpower, and equipment. Otherwise, he felt they wouldn’t even be able to defeat Shan Country.

’—Wait, hold on a minute. Is this really the Zhengguo Army I know?’

’Outdated equipment? Lack of talent? The Security Bureau had recently expanded to its twenty-fourth special operations team—were all those talented people fake?’

’Besides, did he, Su Zhou, not count?’

’As for Spiritual Qi research, that was even bigger nonsense. Right now, only the European Union and the American Federation could compete with Zhengguo in this field. And in any case, the idea that they couldn’t even beat Shan Country was complete bullshit—those guys couldn’t even scrape together a Spiritualized unit.’

Before Su Zhou could finish his frantic internal rant, the second person stood up. It was the other Military Saint. The bald old man’s presence was in no way inferior to the one who had just sat down. Behind him, a giant caption also appeared: ’Accelerate and Implement Development of New Strategic Weapons’.

This Military Saint’s speech was concise. To summarize, although their country had a large number of nuclear warheads, it wasn’t enough to destroy all other nations on Earth, let alone the various Secret Realms and Otherworlds. This was a very dangerous sign. It meant that their nuclear dead-hand strike capability had a massive coverage gap, lacking the strategic power to take the entire Earth, along with all Secret Realms and Otherworlds, down with them. This needed to be urgently strengthened.

"We must seize the time to develop more, bigger, and stronger strategic weapons! This is our most important goal for the next five years!"

Su Zhou: "???"

The Military Saint ended his speech with that sentence. For a moment, Su Zhou—wearing an expression of pure confusion—was almost brainwashed into thinking that Zhengguo’s strategic weapons of destruction were indeed insufficient. The inability to completely destroy the Earth was simply unthinkable!

But after snapping out of it, Su Zhou instantly understood. ’They were all just crying poor to get more funding!’

The subsequent speakers were all a bunch of drama queens who could spout nonsense with a straight face.

According to them, Zhengguo’s navy was basically as good as sunk, and they probably couldn’t even defeat the Golden Horde. The Patrol officers and other armed law enforcement units were short-staffed, underfunded, and poorly equipped due to the surge in crime during the Spiritual Energy Era. The job was also extremely dangerous. If more funding wasn’t approved, all the Patrol officers in the country would be starving by tomorrow.

The more graceful ones, like the education sector, merely stated that they had a severe shortage of qualified teachers and needed to cultivate more talent as soon as possible, which required more funding and personnel. The less graceful ones, like the aerospace sector, claimed that neighboring Zhu Country had launched nineteen satellites in three months and that Zhengguo’s aerospace program was about to be surpassed by them and fall to the bottom of the world rankings.

If you took their word for it, Zhengguo would probably collapse on the spot in three days.

Only after nearly every department had cried poor and made their demands did the meeting’s main agenda finally get on track. The multinational joint ’Tree of Life Exploration Plan’ in the Beast God Realm was scheduled to begin in one week. The leaders for Zhengguo’s side would be the Daoist Saint and Su Zhou.

The other personnel had also long been decided and would soon depart from their respective locations to gather at the Kunlun Secret Realm.

Next came the ’Human Optimization Plan’ proposed by the white-haired Life Saint. This involved using the Mimic Dao Cultivation Method to manipulate genetic information, transforming newborns while they were still embryos into ’New Humans’ with excellent Cultivation Talent and no congenital diseases.

This experimental project was already in its final stages, with only actual human trials remaining. The Life Saint was here to apply for permission to conduct those experiments.

After all, the optimal time for creating a New Human was during the embryonic stage. It wasn’t that modifications couldn’t be made after birth or in adulthood, but the scope of what could be optimized would be greatly reduced. For example, height and appearance would be difficult to change, and it would be impossible to test the optimal results of the modification procedure.

"Human trials?" Su Zhou frowned. He had just been about to vote when he realized the application had already passed. He wanted to say it seemed a bit too fast. While you couldn’t know the results of many things without experimentation, the speed at which the committee had voted to approve it was simply too quick.

However, a Soul Communication from the Daoist Saint quickly arrived: "The human trials the Life Saint mentioned are mostly conducted using his own clones, or even himself. They don’t involve other people, so the committee always approves them quickly."

"His own clones and himself? That’s intense!" Su Zhou was taken aback. He cast his vote of approval. "And if that’s the case, does he even need to apply?"

"He never skips a single required procedure. That guy, Cang Lunzhe, is the type of person who leaves no openings."

A little later, the Artifice Sage also proposed a new concept called the ’Netherworld Network’.

The concept hadn’t been fully explained, and the Artifice Sage’s own description was rather vague. Su Zhou could only catch a few keywords. The foundation of this Netherworld Network plan was to perform a brain-computer modification on all newborns, implanting a chip in their brains to record all their information and memories.

And after death, this collection of memories and information would be entered into a secret super-database in Zhengguo, serving as the reserves for the ’Netherworld’... In other words, Zhengguo was preparing to use its advanced information network technology to artificially create an Electronic Netherworld.

This was far more complex than the Life Saint’s plan. Among other issues, brain-computer interface and memory storage technologies were not yet fully developed, so the vote did not pass. But the Artifice Sage wasn’t discouraged. He seemed to have expected this outcome, yet he still came to try twice a year.

In addition to this, there were procedural plans for the development of various Secret Realms and Otherworlds, as well as operations to sweep and strike against clandestine Extraordinary Organizations like the Spirit Summoning Association and the Continuous Prayer Meeting. The discussions in the virtual conference room basically never stopped. Although the exchanges between the Saints included a fair amount of bickering and blaming, the pace was surprisingly fast.

After hearing all this, Su Zhou finally felt that this was the real meeting of the Thirty-Six Saints. Even the earlier battle for funding, with everyone crying poor for money, was a series of important decisions that would determine Zhengguo’s future direction. Not to mention the later plans, which could decide the future of Zhengguo, and perhaps even all of humanity.

All the plans were proposed, then either passed or rejected. In less than two hours, the meeting was over.

After the meeting ended, almost all of the Thirty-Six Saints left in a hurry. Even if some of the Holy Seats didn’t have busy day-to-day jobs, they still had to seize every moment for Cultivation. After all, in a world of Spiritual Energy Revival, Cultivation itself was a real and tangible form of power.

"So, what do you think? Fast-paced, isn’t it? A little nervous?"

After exiting the Illusion Realm used for the meeting, the Daoist Saint looked laughingly at Su Zhou, who had taken off his Illusion Mask and seemed to be deep in thought. The old man assumed he was nervous and offered some comfort, "Don’t worry about it. The meetings of the Thirty-Six Saints have always been this style. Everyone is used to voting quickly so as not to waste each other’s time."

"No... I think it’s great. It gives me a clear idea of the country’s future direction and a better understanding of my next actions."

Su Zhou shook his head. He stood up and asked the Daoist Saint with some confusion, "I’m just a little puzzled. Zhengguo is clearly in an excellent position right now, and the Spiritual Energy Revival hasn’t caused chaos domestically... So why are we so anxiously proposing one radical-sounding plan after another?"

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